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How to Survive…

Back in the 1980s, John Cleese and his psychotherapist, Robin Skynner, wrote a book called Families and How to Survive Them. Whilst not the laugh-a-minute read you might expect from Cleese, it does explain the psychology of how families interact in an entertaining manner.

I’ve read the book several times, and that’s because some of the insights it provides don’t make sense when you’re at different phases of your family’s life. For instance, the explanations about how teenagers behave don’t really seem that relevant when you’re dealing with toddlers. So it’s good to get a refresher on that teenage behaviour when you really need it – and believe me, you really need it.

The book is one of several that I feel everyone ought to read at least once in their lives. So much so that I even reference it in my own book, Ravens Gathering. (It’s a supernatural thriller, by the way, so if you look for it on Amazon, don’t expect it to be filled with analysis of the human condition.)

A lesser known volume is the Cleese/Skynner follow-up: Life and How to Survive It. Even though I rave about the merits of “Families”, one of the greatest lessons I’ve learnt was to be found in this second book. It’s about 15 years since I read “Life”, so I may have some of the detail wrong here, but the essence of it is correct.

Ten years passed between the two books being written, and in that time Robin Skynner’s wife died. As well as being married, they had worked together, so their lives had been as intertwined as any married couple’s can be. The reader is left in no doubt that Prue Skynner’s death must have been a huge blow. And yet, within a very short space of time – I think less than two years – Skynner had remarried.

For most people, myself included, this rapid recovery from grief can seem… well, unseemly. You couldn’t help but question whether, if he had genuinely loved Prue, he could have got over it and moved on so quickly.

Being a psychotherapist, he had an explanation. And yes, dear reader, it did make sense.

In a nutshell, he said that grief tended to be more protracted and intense if there were regrets. Those regrets might be things you meant to say, or places you meant to visit, or you just spent too much time doing other things and not enjoying each other. In Skynner’s case, their life together had been full and, looking back on it, he had few – if any – regrets. Having that good fortune, although he missed his wife, he wasn’t clinging on to any baggage that would hold him back.

My dad died a couple of years ago. I’ve previously alluded to there being issues in our relationship at times. But by the time he died, we had dealt with them all – the final ones following my own time seeing a psychotherapist. After he died, I was devastated. But only for a while. There are still times when I want to pick up the phone and call him, but I don’t grieve for him, and haven’t for quite some time. And it definitely isn’t because I didn’t care about him – there are plenty of people in my life who will testify to the near obsession I’ve had with my dad at different times.

Here’s something strange, though.

A few weeks ago, my son and I spent some time together. It’s a rare event, and in no small part that’s probably because he’s a teenager working out how to become an independent adult. Our time was over before I knew it, and when he’d gone I felt an oddly familiar emptiness inside me.

When my parents split up, I saw my dad pretty infrequently. At the end of any weekend with him, I felt like there was something missing inside. It was that feeling I was experiencing again. Isn’t that weird? Having the same feeling as both son and father.

I’d felt that sensation before but, for some reason, on this occasion I understood what it meant. It was grief. Grief for the missed opportunities to create the close relationship that’s possible between father and son.

Time will pass and, if God spares us, that great relationship will happen. In the mean time, although I can’t make the emptiness go away completely, at least I understand it for what it is. And I know I can make efforts to put it right. Not overnight, but steadily, a bit at a time. And maybe I should start by reading “Families and How the Survive Them” again.